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Talk:See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey/@comment-1953451-20130330080753/@comment-25526658-20141011173532
"What is going on here? I thought the message went by too quickly." They rushed the message in this episode, and I'm one of those who thinks that, even if they'd slowed it down, the message would still be philosophically-unsound. "Interesting for being the very last episode of the Power puff girls. 'Why can't we all get along'." That does seem to have been the message, which is odd, since it's not a message, but an inquiry, the answer being "because people are different from one another, and they want (or think they want) different things." "Also the supposedly communist ideals of the gnome are also obscured because his realization was of the universe revolving around the existance of 'opposites' not differences." That was another problem. His realization has nothing to do with allowing people to be different from one another, but only with permitting the existence of two "camps." The first of these views, I would agree with. The second, not so much. As long as people are working against one another, there can never be peace, and that's exactly what evil is; an absence of goodness, which causes people to be divided into two (or more) camps, and work against each other. "It was about salvation from evil. But the girls didn't simply give another way to rid the world of evil and provide la-la-love, but they proposed the evil reside together." If they'd suggested that the potential for evil is needed, in order for free will to exist, but that good people can still fight against that evil, that would be, I think, a more correct position, but there's nothing about an absence of good that would make goodness dependant on it, any more than the ocean depends on an absence of water. "This episode also throws out the opposition that the two forces, the PPG and the evil doers have against each other, and the evil-doers forget all of their intentions in favor of the PPG's way." Well, I don't think the intention was to fully-explore this issue, which is sad, since the episode doesn't do much else. I mean, it's not funny, and it's not action-packed. It's just sort of... an amateurish philosophical study. "I was really surprized by the addition of the American flag in the middle which makes this episode much more political than I thought it would have been, but I guess there's no universal flag of freedom other than that, the sons of liberty." It's certainly come to be associated with that. "I didn't quite understand what the professor meant by freedom beef or what it meant when he was beating up the beef as if he was training for a boxing match or dancing with it on the grill." I understood what he was saying, but only after thinking it over for about five minutes, and that part of the episode goes by so fast, that you don't have time to comprehend what he means. Basically, the "freedom beef" line is rather like "shake hands with danger," in that it implies almost the exact opposite of what it sounds like it implies. What the professor is saying, is that the freedom of the people of Townsville is being sacrificed, like bulls to the slaughter; turned into beef, but it sounds as though he's saying the people are "the beef of freedom," implying that they're more free. In reality, of course, freedom is only freedom when it's used to do good. If not, it becomes license. If there is no ability to choose, it's neither freedom nor license, but that's a distinction that I wouldn't expect them to "get." "I understand that the episode clearly opposes a utopian society, so how could, as this wiki says, "we must make peace", isn't that what the gnome did?" Basically, yes. "And didn't the people willingly give up their individiuality even though they weren't asked to, like the girls," It seemed that way, although somehow, I doubt that everyone in Townsville would be on board with this new cult, if there wasn't any magical coercion going on. "even though the girls themselves got a new individuality because "they could finally be normal girls" although the real reason that bubble states was that it was for "the greater good". What then made them change their minds?" It's strange, because this episode seems to take it for granted that, if everyone worked on the same side, nobody would be different from anyone else, which is pretty clearly false. I've very different from a lot of the other people who work at my company, yet we're all "on the same side." If this episode were a logical argument, I'd probably be accusing it of equivocating on the word "freedom." "Yes it was the professor that made them change their minds, but how were they convinced?" The professor told them that the gnome hadn't held up his end of the bargain, because he'd become evil through suppression of human freedom. They knew this was true, because their powers had returned, but honestly, if people all cooperate at something *by their own will,* I fail to see how that suppresses human freedom. Perhaps it was essentially erasing all those evildoers, which was the evil act that gnomey was guilty of. I guess that could be considered murder, if you really want something to peg on him, but I don't see that working together is, itself, an evil thing. The problem with the method that he suggested isn't that people work together, but that there's nobody who can be trusted to be in charge of such a society, since we're all human, and all prone to evildoing. This is why a system where the leader changes frequently is for the best in our own situation. My own perspective is that the real evil being done by the gnome was accepting what was essentially worship. No finite, non-extended being has a right to that. If you'd like to see these issues dealt with more responsibly, I felt that the Lego Movie actually touched most of the same points, but did it right. "Another message of this episode is that freedom from evil comes at a cost of the freedom of individuality and that the only way to be free from evil is to subejct yourself in the cultist way shown, the gnomes way, OR you can get along with what supposedly should threaten your life unless you're in a musical." Yes. It's a pretty clear fallacy of false alternatives. "I also read in the comments that this is really about the Patriot act, and not commie vs. cappie. I'm not American so I don't know anything about that." I don't know much about politics myself, and I AM an American. Still, I know philosophically-unsound positions when I see them.